Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, 5G, IoT, containers, cloud, and more: 

Disappointment for Huawei at CES 2018? — The Chinese company experiences yet another setback in the U.S. as AT&T backs out of a possible smartphone agreement.

VMware Cuts 'Small' Number of Jobs as Part of Business Realignment — VMware didn't specify how many jobs were impacted.

NetScout Stock Sinks, Future Blurred on Slashed Guidance — The company's rival Viavi is viewed as a potential merger partner.

Here are the week's strays and stragglers we roped for you: 

Huawei said talks with U.S. operators remain ongoing despite the company’s failure to secure an expected channel partnership with AT&T for its Mate 10 Pro smartphone.

T-Mobile launched a plan for Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) in the U.S.

Verizon acquired machine-learning threat-hunting company Niddel.

Cisco released its DOCSIS licensing plan for cable operators using its Converged Broadband Router platform.

IoT company ForeScout joined the Department of Defense's Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) program

VMware released version 1.3 of its vSphere Integrated Containers, adding a new graphical-user interface to aid the creation and deletion of virtual container hosts.

Qualcomm extended the offering period for its cash offer to purchase the existing shares of NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch manufacturer that Qualcomm is buying.

Autonomous driving company Cognata built a cloud-based simulation engine for autonomous vehicles using its platform along with Nvidia and Microsoft technologies.

Toshiba launched its mobile edge computing device, dynaEdge, that is certified for Microsoft Azure IoT services.

Palo Alto Networks opened an office and research and development site in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Huawei completed a 5G core network technical verification test that passed the latest 3GPP Release 15 specifications.

HPE, PTC, and Wind River (part of Intel) joined the IoT M2M Council’s program for IoT software platforms. Each company will have its platform assessed by the council.

Cloudify partnered with Fortinet to address the problems with network functions virtualization (NFV) that hinder deployment across hybrid environments.

Cloud networking provider GTT acquired Custom Connect, a telecommunications and network provider.

IBM received a record number of patents in 2017, nearly half of which are for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, blockchain, and quantum computing.

SoftNAS, an SD-storage startup, released version 3.7 of its object storage software Cloud Essentials, which is now optimized for Veeam Availability Suite.

The Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association (GSMA) opened an office in Atlanta.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: